WTF Wednesday #13

WTF Wednesday #13

Being that Number 13 is supposedly unlucky I could do the obvious and write something about bad luck but there isn’t anything really all that WTF about bad luck. Well I guess there really is a whole WTF factor to the number 13. So why do we assign bad luck to certain things and good luck to other.

Like a horse shoe. I’m sorry nothing seems lucky about having a piece of metal nailed to the bottom of your foot. Just not fun. I’m sure it’s not painful for the horses and does prevent a lot of injuries that can cause horses lots of problems. Wild horses seem to avoid all of these problems some how without being shoed

Still doesn’t seem all that lucky.

Rabbit’s feet. Ok not at all lucky for the rabbit

Four leaf clovers – this is essentially a genetic mutation and not normal. And while the X men have made the whole mutation thing work for them there is a lot of not so much love going on about them too.

A penny? Really? Why is this good luck, so you can say you aren’t completely with out cash?

There are so many things but on the bad luck side.

Broken mirrors? Sure it’s a bad thing but 7 years of bad luck for breaking one? I think this has more to do that once upon a time a mirror was really costly and breaking them was not a financially good thing to do so we should treat them with extra care.

Black Cats? Sure they hang out with witches not the word that sounds like witch but starts with a different. But the guilt by association thing seems a bit harsh for the cats to be tagged as bad luck.

The number 13? Spilled salt? Stepping on cracks? Saying things three times. Picking up a penny that is face down and not face up?

What is with all the things that we thing are bad luck?

I carry around a crystal because it is supposed to collect negative energy. I have a four leaf clover in my wallet and once upon a time I had a rabbits foot and I will pick up pennies from the ground and if they are face down I’ll turn them face up to leave for the next person to find. I’ll make an X if a see a black cat cross my path some times. I don’t know why I do all these things because I don’t see myself as being overly superstitious but I do think at times Karma does take a bit too much fun phucking with me.


What are your good luck bad luck things?

In other news…I’m pretty sure I know what I don’t want to know

Litter box thought …scoop, scoop sounds like poop.


That’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,




Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

short

Things have been crazy the last few days and trying to find the time to do all the things I need to do and all the things that I want to do with my days. Trying to find a way to sort out all of them thoughts and say the things that I want to say.

Trying to live in the moment and to be prepared for the next all at once.

I know where I want to end up or more to the point how I would like to see my journey continue. I don’t care how long that takes because that too is part of all of things that make life interesting.

In other news.

The semester end and started in about a two week turn around. Which I think is a week sooner than normal.

Litter box thought.
I really wonder what the cats think about the box and where to poop goes is it just buried deeper in there. Because some times they dig like they are looking for it.



That’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,




Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

WTF Wednesday #12

WTF Wednesday number 12

I know I missed last week but I had other more important things to do than write a blog… no I’m not going to tell you what I was doing…you’ll just have to trust me when I say it was more important.

My WTF this week is about the entitlement or our supposed sense of entitlement. In the information age we are under the presumption that we have the right to know absolutely everything about everyone and everything. We assume that because there is information available it is our right to have it and our right to demand any information be given to us without reservation. This is a very large problem because we don’t have that right, I don’t have that right, and they guy or gal down the street, the next town, other country simply do not have the right to all information.


Specifically I’m talking about the death of Osama. We do not have the right to know anything more than the information released in the initial Presidential statement. We had and enemy and that enemy, was eliminated by our troops period. End of our right to and more importantly our need to know anything more than that information.

You are certainly welcome to have an opinion about it and at least here to cause a stink about wanting to know. By all means please rant to your hearts content, this doesn’t change the fact that you or me, or Joe the plumber have any more right to know this information.

This extends to what we know about the Operations Team that carried out this mission. This may or may not have been a US Navy SEAL team. The reason that the SEALs, the SAS, SBS, GSG9 and other special operations and anti terrorism units are successful is that the public does not have knowledge about what and how these teams operate. If we start making information about these teams public then terrorist groups and cells will adjust their tactics to how these teams operate.

A real world example of this, and I tell this with no disrespect to the team involved, is that a reporter put a microphone in front of a GSG9 member following the successful retaking of a hijacked aircraft. The team member related that they knew where the terrorist were on the aircraft because they were able to see in the windows of the aircraft by lowering down on the outside of the plane from the roof. Any Hijacking occurring now results in the immediate closing of the window shades by those persons making the hostile take over of the aircraft.

As the public we simply don’t need to know how these teams do their jobs. We have congressmen and senators who are empowered to and can and do investigate and conduct inquiries into the possible wrong doing into the activities of our military and other agencies. And our Special Operations teams aren’t a bunch of adrenaline junkies who don’t follow orders. If you don’t follow orders and work as a team you don’t remain in special operations long before you are put into the field.

We further more do not need to see the photographs, video and other information concerning the mission and then open this up to the court of public opinion led by our sound bite journalists. A photo out of context can be made to say so much more than what was really going on and do far more damage to our safety and the lives of our troops and others around the world.

Wake up people this was not a Call of Duty Black Ops load out on the Xbox. This was a real time covert military operation lives were in harms way. Harms way is the military’s polite way of saying that statistically one or more team members are expected to be seriously injured or killed in the completion of the mission. For any military unit there is always the chance you’ll be placed in harms way in the performance of your duties. Because there is no way to predict what will go wrong and how wrong thing will be once they go badly.

Our special operations units and those of our allies do not need the likes of our sound bite journalists and video game Monday morning quarterbacks making a public critique of every step of the mission. Osama and his entourage were considered and known to be dangerous. Lets not forget that every photo or video Osama released of himself contained him either holding, shooting, or having a loaded assault rifle in his hands or within reach. You do not assume because you don’t see a weapon that there is not a weapon around.

If you second guess in a military mission, especially in a special operations mission, you get people killed and then you may not have another opportunity to complete that mission again. It took us ten years to have an opportunity with a high enough potential for success that minimized loss to acceptable levels and provided a real opportunity to capture a target. However, the capturing the heads of terrorist organizations is not usually successful and end in the death of that person regardless of what nation conducts the mission.

In addition because we have eliminated this person, we do not have the right to chant in the streets and cheer his demise. I’m not saying that we were wrong to kill him. I’m saying it is wrong to dance in the streets and act a fool about this action. We as a nation were justifiable offended when thousands around the world celebrated the attacks on 9/11.

We, in the completion of this act of justice, have to behave with more dignity. A nation’s greatness is not measured in its ability to dispense brutality but rather in how it reacts in the face of brutality. This doesn’t mean to always turn the other cheek or to turn an emotionless face to tragedy. It simply means that when diplomacy fails and the use of other means are employed it is done with dignity. We don’t need to put the heads of our enemies on the bridges spanning the Potomac River or on the fences around West Wing hopefully we are a bit more evolved.

Remember that we still have men and women of our armed forces in harms way every day. You can agree or disagree with why our troops are deployed but our actions here and the information released can increase the amount of harm they face every day. I think in closing it is befitting to quote General Douglas MacArthur, “Above all no one prays for peace more than the solder.”




That’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,



Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

I didn't say much here

Not sure that anyone has missed the writing or not but the last week of not writing was spent doing some stuff and doing a lot of thinking. I would share my thoughts but they are about something that I’m not ready to share yet.

I get to those points where there are so many thoughts going on that I can’t find a starting off point. In this case I know where I want to start just not how to start. It seems that so much of what I want to say feels like it’s been said before and that is not how I feel or what I’m thinking.

It isn’t that the thoughts or the ideas are particularly complex and the things that I’m thinking about are more about the unknown rather than what I do know.

There is a lot that I want to say but the thing is once you say it, it’s out there. Then the questions of how will this be read, will it be read the same way that I meant it to be read or not. Maybe I’m over thinking it all. I’m working on something that, will maybe a lot more clear than this. Meanwhile I’ll just go back to being happy.

In other news,
I’ve watched a several movies lately

Skyline was awful it was just a very poorly done fx movie, none of the characters were really developed at all and it was just bad.

Warrior Queen was not completely awful, granted it was by the BBC so for they typical stuff coming from the BBC history section it was good but it wasn’t a great movie. I learned a bit about Boudica who kicked the Roman’s asses

Alpha Dog was actually pretty good. I’m not a huge of Justin Timberlake’s movies but I do like him as an actor.

Open Window was really good, very raw and emotionally telling I would advise reading the entire summery before watching this movie.

Strange Wilderness - Bad, bad, bad, but as crude humor movie it is a must see once and only once.

I’ve also started watching all the Harry Potter movies again. I love them all but the first two are certainly not in the same class as the last three have been.

In unrelated news

There is a shrub next to my house that if really pretty and it’s blooming right now. This is really the only time it is really pretty. It’s pretty because it has flowers on it and because it has flowers on it, it has lots of pollen, and because it has lots of pollen on it I can’t be around it. The rest of the year it is really rather unsightly and ugly and I would cut it down if weren’t for the two weeks where it is really pretty. The smell is nice too but it makes me sneeze a lot… well the pollen makes me sneeze not the smell… I don’t like my allergies.

That’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,




Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

Unanswered

Unanswered by invisible don 5/3/2011

Nothing stirs in the dark
Sitting, staring into the pitch
For a faint shining light
Distant in the mist

Straining as much to see
As not to see, praying to be
Unaware of the knowledge
Just there beyond the dark

From a far closeness
Echoes of metal on tile
Reverberate through the hall
Shattering the long silence

Closed behind doors
Locked and hidden
But ne’er forgotten
The silence calls

Beckoning from the black
Straining against the words
Fighting not to answer
Clinging to a promise

Choking back the eager cry
And yearning to let slip
The anchor line to fall lost
Heaped upon the broken rock

Stained and bloodied hands
Visible and invisible scars
Folding the fools banner into
A tatter square to hide away

Better to bury the shards
Deep within the hollowed
Cage of bone than to pass on
The enduring agony of why



That’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,




Listening to : The rain

Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

I probably should have edited this but I didn't

There are certainly bigger things going on in the world than what I’m about write about … well yeah pretty much anything I ever write about. However I will not be deterred from my keyboard but what I want to talk about is not writing with a keyboard but with a pen or a pencil or other writing tool.

The only things that arrive in my mail box are bills and things I buy which are usually followed by bills or at least me writing the cost of said things into my balance sheet of the checkbook.

Once upon a time I used to get mail in there, well sometimes I would get mail, occasionally …I would … I have the letters if you want to read them… well some of them … you can see the post cards.

The thing is we don’t communicate the same any longer. Letters were and are if you get them a window to a time gone by, a day in the life of another person. They are the conversations over a span of time. There is a connection to the person in the letters.

It starts with the writing you are putting a piece of yourself there on the page. You hold the page and then you write your thoughts out and ask questions, describe events and express emotion.

Then you send that letter out into the world and wait for a reply. That is part of the process. Yes emails work the same and text messages as well, but there is a disconnection in the modern process. You are not really connecting to the other person you aren’t holding anything from theirs give to you just electronic blips. You have your computer, your cell phone, your other device and nothing of the other person.

The waiting too is part of the process. The anticipation and looking in the mail box for a letter.

Then one day it, the reply, arrives as a letter, a card or other piece of mail sent from one person to another.

Holding in your hand something they held and thought of you. Inside the envelopes are all of humanities capacity for emotion. Love, sadness, joy, happiness, anger, regret, woe, mourning, desire, longing, hope and all the others.

There is the connection to that person there and then and when ever you need to have that feeling.

I have letters from many people, some who are long dead and gone from my life but I can pick up those letters and I hold something of them again. Something they touched and sent to me. They thought of me when they put words to the page. Some letters are from my father, from my aunt, grandparents. Friends from other places, and other times in my life most are happy letters, some are erotic letters, some are letters of new beginnings, some are announcements of events and many other things in the lives or those I’ve known in my life.

We still connect and reconnect in this electronic age but we can disconnect all too easily and delete the existence of friends from out lives with the click of a button. It’s all gone then there is nothing to hold in your hand, no faint scent of perfume that once adorned the page, a doodle in the margin, the stains of tears or a coffee cup sat on the page, a smudge a crossed out word that you can just make out what the person was going to say and changed it to something else.

A letter lets another person into our lives. You can keep them or toss them out but in a moment you have something from them. Letters can help you span time. When my daughter turned 18 I gave her a letter that I wrote to her when she was 6 months old. She needed me for so much when I wrote that letter, the day she read it she didn’t. She got to know a dad that she didn’t remember who was happy and scared and looking toward a future day when a baby who couldn’t read the words when they were written would one day be able to read those words and connect and in another 5 years my son will read the letter I wrote to him. You can’t bridge those years with an email or a text message. You can’t make that connection.

In other news

I still smile a good bit

Litter box thought… dang it.


That’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow

Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday

Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy.

Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,



Listening to: TV

Gamer Tag: invisible don

PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015